For usage of "setting up a basic desktop for day-to-day use", to use nix to just mundanely install a list of packages:

What I have is a "myPackages.nix" that I symlink into ~/.config/nixpkgs/overlays https://github.com/rgoulter/dotfiles/blob/22ebe20a820a1adf64...

After installing nixpkgs tool, I can then run "nix-env --install --attr nixpkgs.myPackages" to install that.